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Be Environmentally Friendly and Help Reduce Computer Waste!
Be Environmentally Friendly and Help Reduce Computer Waste!
What we hope to establish is a refurbishing and recycling business for
Internet Information Services. The idea is to collect "pre-owned" bytes
of information, recondition them and resell them at a discount. We
already have some 256 different values in our catalogue (including 128
_different_ ASCII values!) and hope to launch the service in the New
Year. Users will be able to obtain large numbers of "pre-loved" bytes
for use in their own information services applications for a fraction
of the cost of new bytes. Those willing to take the bytes without
support can expect to save even more!
The only problem we have found so far is obtaining a reliable source of
used bytes for recycling. We're presently collecting bytes written to
/dev/null on our own local UNIX machines and have also managed to
recycle a good portion of the huge amounts of output from the archie
telnet client (you'd be _amazed_ at how much junk that program
produces...)
We're also receiving over 30 Megabytes a day of what appears to be
randomly generated text strings over our Usenet feed and have found
that we can recycle a good portion of the headers from each posting
(sadly, the very low information content in the postings themselves
seems to rule out using the message bytes for recycling as we're
concerned about quality control on our recycled bytes).
We've even tapped into the "chargen" ports on a number of machines
accessible over the Internet to obtain large number of ASCII values,
although the net traffic this generates has yet again caused the McGill
University administration to notice what we're up to, so I doubt we'll
be able to use this source in a commercial service. Still, it's given
us enough material to help us get the recycling technology prototyped
and working.
Unfortunately, given the huge anticipated demand for such recycled
bytes we believe that this will definitely _not_ be enough to meet
demand once we go into production mode, so we're currently looking
around for alternative sources of supply.
To meet the anticipated demand I'd like to ask each and every one of
you on this list to consider setting up a byte recycling service for
your network. The idea is to have each individual gather up and send
for recycling whatever bytes they no longer need on their machine.
Doesn't this sound better than simply throwing them all away with "rm"
or DEL", or by dragging them to that silly little trashcan icon?
Besides, haven't you ever asked yourself where those bytes go when you
thrown them away? Believe it or not, most deleted bytes currently find
their way straight into the Internet refuse stream, often to turn up in
postings to Usenet, or worse, OSI standards documents!
We're trying to do our bit to prevent this from happening and think a
viable recycling industry for the Internet is one answer to the problem
(and one that will make us all here at Bunyip filthy rich, which is why
we're proposing the idea).
Here at Bunyip, we're certainly doing our part to get things started.
We're currently working on a new pseudo-device driver for the UNIX
environment that will automatically collect the bytes and forward them
on to our processing centres without further human intervention. Users
need only write the bytes to the new device and they will be
automatically sent off for processing!
In time, we hope to see this pseudo-device (tentatively named
"/dev/blue-box") installed on every UNIX machine on the network. We
firmly believe a strongly supported recycling program would enable us
to meet the anticipated demand for pre-owned bytes while having a very
positive effect on the ecology of the Internet waste stream (and make
us lots of money, but I mentioned that bit already, didn't I? No point
in giving the game away entirely, you know. Walls have ears, etc,
etc...)
Of course, in the beginning such recycling will not be entirely
automated. Users will still be expected to sort their bytes into
several groups, including ASCII text, data and "Usenet postings" (which
given their low information content obviously aren't worth recycling).
Users will also be expected to rinse out their data bytes and remove
all labels from files imported from the IBM mainframe environment.
Of course, users will have to use the major number/ minor number pair
on the device driver to determine which type of refuse you are
recycling [* Note: non-UNIX types should go ask a UNIX weenie to
explain this reference. On second thought, don't bother. It's not
_that_ funny... *] Anyways, this is a minor inconvenience considering
the environmental advantages and savings in hardware costs users can
expect from a successful recycling program.
For example, apparently accretion of such waste bytes on disk heads
(which build up over time when users continually create and delete
files in a networked environment and systems admins continually dump
and restore bytes that haven't been accessed for a long time) are one
of the major cause of unexplained disk crashes.
Really...
In the future, we might even be able to talk about paying you for your
used bytes, although of course in the beginning this would be out of
the question as we seek to build our profit margins to the point where
we could afford the heating bills we face up here in Montreal each
year. We're sure you all understand. Besides, most right-thinking
people agree that paying for information on the Internet, although not
illegal, probably should be...
Oh, one last comment. One problem we thought we'd have would be in
importing and exporting the used bytes into Canada for processing, but
apparently this is clearly covered under a clause of the current
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. This clause was apparently put in
place to allow the Americans to send transcripts of their political
speeches up North for disposal after each election while the Canadians
were hoping to profit by sending transcripts of the on-going
constitutional and language debates down south each year. Economists
point to this clause as one example of the FTA in which the net
benefits to each party have been exceedingly hard to define or
measure...
In any event, as a global player in the Information Services field,
Bunyip is of course studying the possibility of sending the bytes down
to Mexico for processing in a maquiladora plant in Baja California in
the event the North American Free Trade Agreement manages to come to
fruition. Apparently, workers down there will work for as little as 50
cents a day plus all the Usenet postings they can read. Talk about lax
environmental laws!
Although we regret the necessity of sending badly needed hi-tech jobs
down south, the potential profits will probably be impossible to
resist. We figure we can salve our collective corporate consciousness
on this by donating a certain number of processed bytes to be used in
Canadian Federal government studies on unemployment in the information
processing field. There, I feel better already...
Well, that's our plan for the new service. Now, this may not seem as
immediately relevant to you as the need to sell used cars to carry
commercial IP traffic (that _is_ what we're talking about, right? I've
kind of lost track). Anyways, I think such exciting (and lucrative)
examples of the potential for a commercial Internet information market
should be brought to the attention of this list. Might give everybody
something else to talk about!
So, hope you found this at least as valuable as some of the other stuff
coming over this list right now. I'd like to think I've done my bit to
make com-priv what it is today....
- peterd
--- Insert Legal Bit Here ---
The preceeding posting is copyright (c) 1992, by Peter Deutsch, of
Bunyip Information Systems Inc, who should be solely responsible for
its contents. Unfortunately for you, like most people I know I had an
unhappy childhood (for at least a part of it) and thus can't be held
responsible for anything I say or do. On the other hand, if you want to
reprint this somewhere, you'd better let me know, and maybe even send
me a cheque, or my lawyers will be calling your lawyers and doing
lunch! (can you tell I was born in California? :-)
So there....
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Peter Deutsch,
Bunyip Information Systems
Disclaimer? What disclaimer? I'm president of the company and own half
the stock. these _are_ the opinions of the company...
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